1. Field of the Invention
My musical instrument employs a special keyboard and connections therefrom, including a scale selecting switch.
2. Description of the Prior Art
I have described an organ with a hexachord keyboard in my copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 486,973, filed July 10, 1974, and now U.S. Pat. No. 3,865,004.
Use of the hexachord keyboard helps children to acquire an appreciation of music, particularly if they are encouraged to experiment and improvise simple melodies and harmonies. Elimination of a semitonal interval from the diatonic scale decreases the likelihood of getting unwanted pitch combinations and greatly increases the ability to pick out a tune. This approach, attempted on the traditional keyboard, is marred by the danger of hitting the wrong digital, with its distracting influences. The danger is reduced on my simplified keyboard which has only six lower digitals per octave span.
When children are learning sight reading, they become confused by the traditional musical notation which sometimes represents a particular tone on a line of a staff, and at other times in a space between the lines. More confusion is caused when playing on the treble staff is transferred to the bass staff, where the lines and spaces are differently labeled.
Any six tone musical scale leads naturally to a simple notation compatible with five-line staves, which we may give the generic name hexatonic notation. In hexatonic notation, three of the notes are always assigned to lines, the other three notes are always assigned to spaces. Moreover, the labeling of the lines and spaces in the upper five-line staff is the same as the labeling in the lower five-line staff.
Starting in the past century, there has been interest in the whole tone scale, which has six tones with a musical interval of two semitones between each pair of consecutive tones in the scale. This scale has its special virtues but also disadvantages, and no attempt to promote the whole tone keyboard has been widely accepted. Since the tones of the whole tone scale are uniformly spaced, there is no natural basis for development of loyalty to a particular tone. Furthermore, the whole tone scale lacks the muscial intervals of fourths and fifths which are basic to the early development of music appreciation.
For teaching music to beginners, I have found that the hexachord scale is an improvement over the whole tone scale. The hexachord's "irregularity" serves as a focal point in tonal development, and the hexachord scale includes intervals of fourths and fifths. In my hexachord notation, tones corresponding to lines of the staff constitute the C major triad; tones corresponding to the spaces constitute the D minor triad.
While hexachord notation eases the introduction of children to music, an organ pupil who has been trained in the hexachord system finds that at the present time, most organ music is written in the seven note notation and with one of 14 different key signatures. In order to play this large mass of printed music, accumulated over many years, it would seem that the organ pupil must undergo an arduous extension of his previous training. My improved organ is designed to ease this difficulty.